Skip to main content

A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement


      
#MLK #MartinLutherKingJr #IHaveaDream

I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history.


Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. The one-day event both protested racial discrimination and encouraged the passage of civil rights legislation; at the time, the Civil Rights Act was being discussed in Congress. The march featured various speeches as well as musical performances before King, a celebrated orator, appeared as the final official speaker; A. Philip Randolph and Benjamin Mays ended the proceedings with a pledge and a benediction, respectively.

Early in his prepared speech, King referenced Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address with “Five score years ago….” He then spoke about the Emancipation Proclamation, which “end[ed] the long night of their [slaves’] captivity.” However, he continued by noting that African Americans were still “not free” and that they were “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”

According to various observers, however, as King neared the end, the address was failing to achieve the resonance of his more noteworthy speeches. As activist John Lewis noted, King himself could “sense that he was falling short.” Perhaps that compelled singer Mahalia Jackson to call out, imploring him to tell the crowd about “the dream.” It was a theme he had used at earlier events but had been advised not to use in Washington, with one aide calling it “trite.” At Jackson’s urging, however, King abandoned his prepared text and launched into a discussion of his dreams, adopting “the stance of a Baptist preacher.”


I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that…one day right there in Alabama, little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.


King’s improvisations seemed to strike a chord with the crowd, many of whom called out words of encouragement. The speech built to its emotional conclusion, which was borrowed from a Black spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” Largely based on King’s extemporizations, the speech was widely considered the greatest of the 20th century, noted for its power and resonance. With its universal appeal, “I have a dream” became an enduring phrase both in the United States and elsewhere. In addition, many believed the speech helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.




 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coping With Moods: The Challenge of the Turbulent Mind

#Mood #Impulses #selfregulate #selfsoothe  #Triple5LightTherapy #BlackMaleTherapist #Psychotherapy The power of moods and impulses can be overwhelming, but we can learn to self-regulate and self-soothe through awareness practices like meditation and mindfulness. By developing a healthy dialogue with our emotional nature, we can access deeper parts of ourselves and become more resilient in the face of stress and pressure. Rather than being swept away by our ever-shifting moods, we can learn to pause and reflect before acting. by Gillian McCann, Ph.D., and Gitte Bechsgaard, RP
Post a Comment
Read more

The Price of Perfection

#Perfection #CopingStrategies #Mindfulness #AllorNothingThinking #Catastrophizing, Broadly speaking, perfectionism is a personality style where people set exceptionally high standards for themselves in order to achieve perfection. However, the motive behind perfectionism is not the achievement of perfection, but rather, the avoidance of failure. More simply speaking, perfectionism is really a type of anxiety. Anxiety is adaptive and evolutionarily speaking, protects us from danger. In cavemen days, anxiety helped our ancestors flee from predators. However, in modern days, rarely do we need to flee from predators. Consequently, maladaptive anxiety is increasingly common and acts as a faulty alarm system- alerting us to danger as if there were a predator chasing us when actually we are not in real danger. In regards to perfectionism, those with this type of anxiety are so afraid to fail, they go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of failure. Underneath, an alarm system is g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kate Bush's "50 Words for Snow"

  #50WordsforSnow #KateBush #RunningUpThatHill From up on that hill, perhaps wearing a capelet over a flowy Victorian gown, Kate Bush has been regarded as a spirit saint of fearless individuality by a generation of musicians such as Björk and Tori Amos as well as younger mystics-in-training such as Florence Welch, Leslie Feist and Bat for Lashes. All that adoration in the ether must’ve stirred the reclusive British singer-songwriter to create not just one album this year — “Director’s Cut,” a reinterpretation of songs from “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes” — but also a second one, “50 Words for Snow,” an art-song cycle that veers from delicate to blustery but always with a sheen of elegance.  Bush grounds her songs in the permafrost of winter, with her piano work sounding like the first stirrings after a cold snap. “Among Angels” could be the soundtrack for plants stretching toward the new spring sun, but as much as it’s connected to the natural world, the s...
Post a Comment
Read more

4 Strategies for practicing Radical Self-Acceptance

Radical Self-Acceptance Painting by Jennifer Mazzucco #mindfulness #self-judgment #RadicalSelfAcceptance #negativethinkingpatterns #thoughts Radical acceptance involves acknowledging how life unfolds without resistance, even if we don't like things at any given moment. It can take effort to apply this principle. How can we begin to accept our situation and ourselves despite experiencing anxiety, uncertainty, and fear? Why self-acceptance is not the same as complacency. It is essential now, more than ever, to practice radical self-acceptance. This means training ourselves to find inner stability despite unpredictable external circumstances. Ultimately, we are responsible for acknowledging our hidden wounds, which can lead to personal and collective growth. Radical self-acceptance is the opposite of avoiding responsibility or giving up in self-defeat. It requires pushing against old ways of being to open the door to deep healing. Embracing radical self-acceptance allows us to int...
Post a Comment
Read more